Peter van Manen

Peter van Manen is the Managing Director of McLaren Electronics, which provides data systems to major motorsports series.

Why you should listen

To say that Peter van Manen has a high-speed job would be an understatement. As Managing Director of McLaren Electronics, which provides electronics and data collection software to motorsports events, he and his team work in real time during a race to improve cars on about 500 different parameters. That's about 750 million data points in two hours.

But recently van Manen and his team have been wondering: Why can't the extremely precise and subtle data-collection and analysis systems used in motorsports be applied elsewhere, for the benefit of all? They have applied their systems to ICU units at Birmingham Children's Hospital with real-time analysis that allows them to proactively prevent cardiac arrests. The unit has seen a 25 percent decrease in life-threatening events. And it's just the beginning.